Portal

Portal is a first-person puzzle game released in a number of ways. It is one of the games featured in Valve's Orange Box (released for the PS3, 360, PC), released as a stand-alone game for the PC, and released for the Xbox Live Arcade with the name Portal: Still Alive. Portal was developed by Valve, who also made games such as Half-Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Counter Strike. Notice something here? All games are made for the first-person, and Valve is a renowned first-person shooter developer.

You play as an unwilling test subject who must go through 19 test chambers in order to receive a supposed cake. That's pretty much the story. Seriously.

Gameplay is what makes this game unique. You receive a portal gun that shoots two kinds of portals; an orange portal and a blue one. If you enter one, you exit out of the other. There are many hazards in the test chambers. You have to go against poisonous waters, automatic turrets, lethal laser balls, and crushing machines. You can only place portals at white colored walls, ceilings, and floors. To solve tests, you would have to either get a box onto a red button, or get a laser ball to enter an activation button. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. Almost every puzzle is uniquely mind-bending, and every puzzle is not like the last. The final boss is very satisfying, too.

The game is not really bad. At all. Valve made an innovative puzzler that pretty much anyone can enjoy. Really, the only bad part about the game is that it's too short. Like, really short. 19 puzzles plus a boss fight may seem long, but really, it isn't. Anyone that loves a brain-tickling game or a first-person action game should definitely buy the game.

Score:

9.0

The good: unique gameplay, catchy song at the end, satisfyingly great puzzles, great final boss.

The bad: It's too short.